The lure of China's huge but underexploited market, the government's drive for renewable energy and low production costs for exports to fast-growing bigger markets in the United States and Europe have foreign and domestic firms rushing to set up wind farms or build production plants across the country.

With 20% of the world's population, China now consumes 10% of the world's energy. This would suggest that just to come up to the international average, China will need to double its energy consumption. With an economy growing at 9% per year, China is on track to do just that, and consequently they are developing every source of energy they possibly can.

Tsukuba, the town that prides itself as Japan’s most hallowed scientific research centre, is the site of perhaps the world’s worst electricity wind farm: in the 12 months it has operated, its windmills have consumed 43 times more power than they have generated.

The project to make Tsukuba a self-sufficient showpiece for green energy has failed, heaping scorn upon the central government programme to test alternative sources. It is likely to be used as ammunition by sceptics elsewhere, including Britain, where the Government this week published its energy review. Tsukuba is now locked into a spiral of civil litigation, criminal investigations and an unprecedented attack on the academic reputation of Waseda University, Japan’s most respected seat of learning.

Chinese developers unveiled the world’s first full-permanent magnetic levitation (Maglev) wind power generator at the Wind Power Asia Exhibition 2006 held June 28 in Beijing, according to Xinhua News..

A breeze of just over 5 kms an hour is sufficient to start the machine, which means it can operate for many more hours than traditional wind turbines, said Zeng Zhiyong, president of the Zhongke Hengyuan Energy Technology which developed the turbine with the help of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzhou.

The protest erupted over plans for a wind-power plant that used village lands and required significant landfill in a bay where the people have for generations made a living fishing. Before that, nearby village land had been used for the construction of a coal-fired power plant.

Police said the wind turbine generator of the unit exploded last night and caught fire. The splinters from the turbine, located a few kms from the Koodankulam Nuclear Power project site, spread over one sq km after the explosion.

President Vladimir Putin is reportedly planning to increase the number of nuclear reactors in Russia from 29 to 59 and to upgrade old power stations to extend their lives. Mr Putin is expected to provide more details of the rebirth of nuclear at the forthcoming G8 summit of leading economies in St Petersburg next month.

Hamatombetsu, Japan (ANTARA News) - Increases in the generation of wind power, introduced nationwide as an environment-friendly energy, are hitting a snag as enterprises are reluctant to do the business because electric power companies are negative to buy such power....."Output is unstable because it depends on wind, obstructing stable power supplies," said an executive at a power company.

Most experts also believe that, using current technologies, there isn't enough land to make a serious dent in oil consumption. Some scientists say production will consume more conventional energy than it will save, and environmentalists came out this month against plans by Indonesia to convert millions of acres of rain forest on the island of Borneo into palm oil plantations.

Cracks are developing among environmentalists. They hate nuclear power but like renewables. Sun is not always reliable. Wind, often lazy and slow. They are unreliable and add totally a small percentage. If we need power that is always available, we have to have it from coal or natural gas or nuclear.

Britain and Sweden are on target for reducing global-warming gases, but other countries will have to toughen policies and rely on "carbon trading" to achieve their Kyoto Protocol goals by 2012, says a new U.N. report.

Local investors are finding it hard to import windmill generators from Europe and the US to set up wind power generation projects due to unavailability of these generators, sources in the alternative energy sector said here yesterday.

Energy hungry China is trying to diversify its energy mix by pushing the use of nuclear and renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power.

"When you gasify coal and burn the resulting gas, you can easily remove the hazardous materials from it, such as mercury. We have already developed the gasification technology needed for the power generation. What we need to do is to pull down the cost and find good business partners in Korea, Japan and China."

FARIDABAD, India -- Indians know better than to eat the plum-sized fruit of the wild jatropha bush. It's poisonous enough to kill.

INTERNATIONAL power companies are increasingly worried about energy security and greenhouse emission but still plan to build much of their future on coal, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers' Utilities Global Survey 2006.

European and Asian companies are paying more attention to global warming than their American counterparts. And chemical companies are more focused on the issue than oil companies.

ISLAMABAD: The opposition’s call to boycott products from Denmark over the publication of offensive cartoons and the government’s protest have halted wind projects in Pakistan engineered by the Alternate Energy Development Board.